By sharing a recent experience in which I delivered a
lecture and case at a responsible conduct of research (RCR) workshop for
biomedical science trainees, I will comment on why I believe that pedagogy on
the RCR, specifically for biomedical scientists, needs two essential
ingredients: delivering knowledge/information and providing case-based
learning. The art is to determine how much of each element is needed and how to
most effectively deliver information on an RCR topic and ensure trainees get
the most from the ethical analysis of cases.

As part of Canada’s Stem Cell Network at http://www.stemcellnetwork.ca, I had
the unique opportunity to organize and present an Ethics Workshop as part of
the Network’s annual Till & McCulloch Meetings in October 2013. The
workshop was a lecture followed by an interactive ethical case using “The Lab:
Avoiding Research Misconduct” video hosted by the Office of Research Integrity
(ORI) at https://ori.hhs.gov/thelab.
The 50 to 60 workshop attendees were primarily master’s, doctoral, and
post-doctoral trainees, and almost all were biomedical researchers working with
stem cells. Most attendees had never heard of RCR. Thus, the goals of the workshop
were modest and involved introducing attendees to the following: RCR, research
misconduct (fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism), the RCR link to
scientific retractions, issues of authorship and publication ethics, and
Canada’s RCR framework.

The workshop began with a discussion of several high-profile
cases of stem cell fraud, including the 2009 Hwang cloning scandal. The
discussion also included more recent cases involving research misbehaviors
uncovered at The New York Stem Cell Foundation meeting and the case of
misconduct in Amy Wagers’ lab at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. The purpose
was to make the audience aware that research misbehavior does occur in the stem
cell field and in other areas of biomedicine.

I chose to focus on research misconduct and authorship
because our workshop was 1.5 hours. I focused on misconduct because it is
perhaps one of the most dishonest behaviors in the ethics of science. I also
focused on authorship because most students are likely to encounter situations in
which they disagree on it. I began with a broad picture of science and society
and explained why scientists have moral obligations to conduct research
upholding the highest integrity standards. I next offered a big-picture
overview of the range of ethical violations in research. I then delved into the
ethics, policies, and practices related to research misconduct and to authorship
and publication ethics. To convey an ethical case that had elements of
misconduct and authorship, I decided to use The Lab interactive video. The ORI
video was ideal for use with a large audience. It permits attendees to choose
responses and allows me to pause the video and ask why some chose one response
over another before moving forward to the next segment. For smaller classroom
settings, a more intimate discussion would be better suited to get into the
crux of the case. We chose to examine the role of Kim Park, the graduate
student who questions how another researcher used her data. I made sure that
not all the best choices were selected so participants could understand why
some choices are better than others. From the continuous discussion and
laughter, it seemed the video was a hit, and a follow-up survey showed that
students were very satisfied.

I was quite happy with the results of the workshop, and
while flying back home, I reflected on some of my experiences teaching RCR to
different audiences. Since 2009, I have given guest lectures on RCR to government
scientists and academic audiences, primarily students in science, medicine, and
law. In the past two years, I have co-instructed the two RCR courses offered at
AMC, which my colleague John E. Kaplan, Ph.D., describes in his commentary. The
focus of the course will inform the tools you decide to use in class. For example,
lectures I have given to law students in a Biotechnology
Policy and the Law course at the University of Alberta focused on the
ethics of science and the governing laws and policies in Canada and
internationally. The lectures could have incorporated an analysis of legal
cases if the focus was on legal practice and I was trained as a lawyer. As scientists
are not trying to be legal or bioethics scholars in RCR, both the RCR workshop and
our AMC courses on scientific integrity take on a more practical bent, and the
emphasis is placed on cases. As I will go on to discuss, cases with nearly no background
information on an RCR topic paint a partial picture. Courses designed to teach
RCR to scientists require both knowledge components and case-based teaching.

Both parts 1 and 2 of this blog were originally published as a commentary in the Office of Research Integrity’s Newsletter (http://ori.hhs.gov/newsletters) Volume 22, Number 2, March 2014 and has been reproduced with permission for the AMBI blog.

The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers a Master of Science in Bioethics, a Doctorate of Professional Studies in Bioethics, and Graduate Certificates in Clinical Ethics and Clinical Ethics Consultation. For more information on AMBI's online graduate programs, please visit our website.